YouIntern Pairs Co-Eds with Agencies

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To drum up some business, YouIntern -- which launched in February -- is giving a $10 iTunes gift card away to one lucky person who registers on the site.

YouIntern is where ad students and creativity-starved agency execs can find one another. (Just ... not in the craigslist hook-up sort of way.) We love its simple but totally self-entitled "Freedom from coffee and copies" manifesto.

Agencies can post internships and give advice, like the CSO of StrawberryFrog does here. And internships can be rated. Modernista, for example, scored a 4.4 out of five.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Agencies, Good, Online, Promotions



Leo Burnett Combats Cancer with Man Hair

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Nothing says "manly" like a manly manly mustache. So why not use its follicle-rich power to fight prostate cancer, that most castrating of man-diseases? That's what Leo Burnett did.

For the month of what came to be called "Movember" ("mo" being slang for "mustache" in Australia), employees at Leo Burnett, Chicago grew mustaches to raise money for prostate cancer research. Part of the game was competing with the Australia office. (Witness the hijinks for yourself.)

Chicago, which beat the Aussies in both donation and 'stache style, raised $7000 for the cause. For an additional $10 donation, employees were offered a signed Men of Movember 2008 calendar.

Guess what! Now you can have one too. And if anybody asks why a calendar of hairy strangers is hanging over the water cooler, just tell them you helped fight cancer.

Only pray they don't ask what one has to do with the other. Out loud and to somebody who's probably gunning for your cubicle, telling this story is strangely tiring.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Agencies, Cause, Good, Strange



Funny How Different Things Look When It's that Time of Month

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Always is running this campaign where it's printing feel-good phrases like "Have a happy period" over the wax paper on maxi pads. We didn't think much about it until we saw this letter, allegedly written to P&G by a woman gone totally apeshit over it. Her first thought upon tearing open a new pad and seeing "Have a happy period" was "Are you fucking kidding me?"

A really sunny excerpt:

FYI, unless you're some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything "happy" about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don't march down to the local Walgreen's armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

We giggled about it.

And then it happened.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Opinion, Strange, Trends and Culture



Jack's For Hillary, Rest of Hollywood's For Obama, Tilley Tattered

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- Jack Nicholson's got a thing for Hillary. And he's expressing it by using clips from the many movies he's made over his career.

- On Advertising Age, Ken Wheaton explores the Hitleresque qualities of the latest will.i.am Obama video.

- And the Paul Tilley saga continues. Here and here and here. Make it stop. Please. Can't we just let the man rest in peace?

- Minneapolis-based Martin Williams has laid off 14 people in media, creative, operations and in print and television production.

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by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Agencies, Cause



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Soap Opera Weekly Launches ... Casual Games?

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Passions got you all hot and bothered? Cool off with Sudz, one of the eight puzzles that Soap Opera Digest debuted in its new casual gaming section, courtesy of Arkadium. Also available: Mah-jongg, Sudoku, Spider Solitaire and Word Search.

But wait! This isn't just a cheap effort to cash in on idle traffic. Two of the games, Jigsaw and Wordsearch, can be customized to feature the faces of soap stars or current magazine covers. (Looking for love, or at least the right letters? Let Blair Redford show you the way.)

Words and themes can also be given a Dynasty twist, as needed.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Games, Online, Television



Royal Enfield Brings the 'Tripper' Out in Everybody

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We just got a ton of creative from a new Royal Enfield campaign in Delhi. It's called "Trip" -- not to be confused with what happens when you ingest too many of the wrong kind of mushrooms.

Pretty standard profile-of-a-user stuff. Each one has a picture of a dude, his name and his motorcycle, followed by a brief timeline of "whoa!" and "damn!" activities. Each timeline ends with "Tripping ever since," which refers to when they started riding Royal Enfields.

Profile campaigns are sort of like the Zodiac. If you add enough variation and disseminate the ads across enough media, you're bound to trigger an irrational "Hey, that's TOTALLY ME!" in anybody curious enough to linger on the copy.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster



Coldwell Tries Funny with Founding Father Staring Contest

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There are few things more lame than a competitive staring match between two non-blinking pros, unless those pros are also inanimate objects.

Watch helplessly as the portraits of Coldwell Banker's founding fathers, Colbert Coldwell and Arthur Banker, try to out-stare each other. Well, sort of. They're side by side, so they can't really stare.

It could be worse. (Imagine the moving-mouth and eyeball-hockey effects that challenged advertisers usually impose on stills.)

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Television



AdWeek and Advertising Age Award Mediaedge:cia Media Agency of Year

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It appears Mediaedge:cia is mopping up the media planning and buying floor having nabbed nods from both Advertising Age and AdWeek for best media shop of the year. To clarify, AdWeek dubbed the shop Agency of the Year. Advertising Age dubbed the shop Global Media Agency Network of the Year - a distinction worth noting as Adverting Age dubbed Starcom Media Agency of the Year (as in domestic).

Starcom has always been a winner in our book and we were lucky enough to see the inner working of the shop first hand. We're not as familiar with Mediaedge:cia but from all accounts, they're deserving enough of the distinction. Congrats to both.

by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Agencies



Icons Transcend Time in Converse Sneaks

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To celebrate 100 years in footwear, Converse is welding new icons to old ones in a campaign called "Connectivity."

According to Complex, "cultural heroes" like James Dean, Hunter S. Thompson and Sid Viscious will fuse feet (neat touch!) with Common, Dwyane Wade and Billie Joe Armstrong. Sort of like paper dolls.

See more here.

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Jamie Lee Curtis Can't Take A Dump, Hypes Dannon's Bifidus Regularis

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Over two years ago, Dannon began promoting its Activia yogurt with the special ingredient, Bifidus Regularis, a "nonsense word that's been trademarked," as dubbed by American Copywriter. The ingredient is supposed to make women more regular, to use acceptable vernacular. Because marketers can't always come right out and say what they mean - in this case, "Dannon, the yogurt that helps you shit better" - meaningless words have to be created to sugar coat what every person over the age of five can see right through.

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by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Celebrity, Commercials, Creative Commentary



PETA Would be Proud of Dove Evolutionized Foster Farm Chicken

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What? Let a week go by without another Dove Evolution spoof? OK so we've let lots of weeks slip without sharing one which is why we'll share this Foster Farms chicken transformation with you. The Foster Farms chickens, The Foster Impostors, have spent 15 years in Foster Farms commercial trying, unsuccessfully, to pass themselves off as natural chickens.

In this spoof, one of the chickens, after 15 years, gets his 15 minutes of fame. From an ugly, junk food eating lump of feathers to a svelte, finely Photoshopped king of the chicken coop, this bird is served up just like PETA likes it: alive, well groomed and naked on a billboard.

by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Spoofs



Bloated Rat, Squid, Frog Demonstrate Sony Micro Vault Storage Capability

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This Dubai, UAE campaign for Sony Micro Vault -- created by Promoseven -- is, to say the least, a bit weird. However, we like it. A lot. It's nice when a campaign highlights what the product actually does. In this case, the ability of the Sony Micro Vault to store impossibly large, in comparison, objects. Or data as it were.

A nice touch to the work is the happy grin the rat, frog and squid display as if swallowing something 500 times their size is no big deal. And there's no boring copy. Although plenty of people out there would argue good copy can be just as powerful as a good visual.

by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Creative Commentary, Good, Magazine



'Cerebellum Slap' the New 'Curiously Strong'

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Well someone doesn't like this new work for Altoids from Energy BBDO...and it just might be us. Though we're not sure. Let's discuss. While Adrants reader Maury tells us the work is "fucking terrible," we can't help but get a chuckle out of what one might label "witty British humor" when it comes to the ad's tagline, "A slap to the cerebellum since 1780." It's just so...sepia toned.

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by Steve Hall    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Bad, Commercials, Creative Commentary, Good



To Plea for Plight of Pigs, PETA Exploits ... Yo' Mama.

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Here's a picture from a recent PETA stunt at Covent Garden in London. (If you're wondering why it says "Moo," it's because it came from our favourite Hilton.) Campaign copy reads, "Unhappy Mother's Day for pigs! GO VEGETARIAN."

See Make the Logo Bigger exercise deductive logic: "Wouldn't momma pigs have a bad day every day?"

No need to be coherent when you've got a naked MILF on her knees in a cage. And BFD says the woman in the cage isn't just somebody's mom -- she's pregnant.

Ugh, PETA, uuuuuugh. You make us want to tear the shin off an antelope with our teeth.

by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Cause, Guerilla, Human, Worst



'quarterlife' Slips into Inner Recesses of UCLA Backpacks

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For the network debut of quarterlife, NBC used Free Hand Ads to promote the show across the top margin of college-ruled paper. Free Hand distributed the sheets at UCLA on February 14.

It's often said that the best ideas are the simple ones. We believe it of Free Hand Ads, so we totally don't blame them for the fact that quarterlife so enthusiastically bombed on its first night on air (totaling 3.86 million viewers, last in its class).

Some drama is better left on MySpace.

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by Angela Natividad    Mar- 3-08    
Topic: Guerilla, Outdoor, Promotions